To Hell on a Fast Horse

by Peter Brandvold

  “You sound like brother and sister.”

  “That’s pretty much what we are, Doc.”

  Whitfield took another sip of his brandy. He didn’t seem to be enjoying it all that much. “Tell me what’s going on in town, Mr. Prophet. Between you and the men you think ambushed you.”

  “Oh, I know they ambushed me, Doc. I heard it from their own lips, though I’ll admit I was a might deceptive. I listened to ’em talkin’ in the billiard room after Wayne’s funeral. Now I got the who of it answered. So’s I just need to know the why. If they confess their sins to your local lawdog, and if he’ll lock ’em up and call for the circuit judge, all will be well between me and Box Elder Ford.”

  “That’s a tall order, I’d imagine.”

  “I would, too, but when they ambushed me an’ Louisa that night, they were fillin’ a tall one themselves. And they fucked it up. Pardon my French, but I’m mad as an old wet hen.”

  “So you have poor Roscoe Deets in the middle.”

  “There’s no need for him to be in the middle. He wears a badge. This is his town. He should act like it.”

  “We had a man like that before Deets showed up. That’s why Deets is in there now.”

  Prophet laughed without mirth and shook his head. “Well, I reckon you get what you pay for. But if there’s gonna be any justice . . . and peace . . . in Box Elder Ford, Deets is gonna have to live up to that badge on his coat.”

  “And what if neither your ambushers nor Deets complies with your demands, Prophet?”

  “Then I reckon I’ll be taking matters into my own hands.”

  “And the town be damned.”

  “Doesn’t have to be that way.”

  Whitfield took another, larger swallow of his brandy, set the glass on his right thigh, and stared at Prophet dubiously through his glasses. “To use a stockman’s expression, don’t you think you’re stomping a little high, Mr. Prophet?”

  Prophet felt his cheeks warm with anger. He leaned forward on his knees. “They ambushed that girl in there. Could have killed her. Could have killed me. And I don’t even know why.”

  “I’m not saying you don’t have the right to be angry. I’m just wondering if you’re not stomping a little high, placing this entire town in a whipsaw.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way,” Prophet said, “if Roscoe Deets would grow up and be the lawman he calls himself.”

  Prophet drained his glass.

  “Mr. Prophet?”

  He looked at Whitfield. “I know how you feel about her, but don’t take it out on the whole town. It’s just eight men who ambushed you. There are two hundred innocent bystanders here in Box Elder Ford.”

  Prophet sank back against the couch, holding his empty glass on his leg. “What would you like me to do?”

  “Sometimes things happen and there’s really no one to see about them. Sometimes you just have to cut your losses.” Whitfield stared pensively down at his own glass, then drained it. “Those men . . . they might have been desperate. You don’t know what compelled them. I’d imagine it was something very . . . powerful, maybe beyond their ability to control. They felt that they had no option. I know those men, and none of them is a cold-blooded killer. Desperation compels men to do the oddest, most foolish things. Things that they might not otherwise do.”

  “What was it?”

  “Huh?”

  “What compelled them?” Deep lines cut across the bounty hunter’s leathery forehead as he narrowed his eyes at the doctor. “Come on, Whitfield. You know, don’t you? What was it?”

  Whitfield rose from his chair. “I was speaking in general terms, Mr. Prophet. Now, if you’ll forgive me, I need to call my son and start preparing supper.” He held his hand out for Prophet’s glass.

  The bounty hunter stood, glowering in frustration. “All right. Thanks for the drink, Doc.” He donned his hat. “But if you decide to tell me, I’m all ears.” He strode out of the room. “I’ll see myself out.”

  Prophet had stabled Mean and Ugly in the Federated Livery and Feed Barn and was heading down Hazelton to look for a room and a meal, when he stopped suddenly. He poked his hat brim back off his forehead.

  Doc Whitfield was just then crossing the street a half a block ahead. The doctor was riding his horse, and he didn’t have his medical kit hanging from his saddle horn. He wore a corduroy jacket and a bowler hat. He crossed Hazelton and continued westward one block before swinging down a cross street and heading north.

  Prophet poked his hat up from behind and scratched the back of his head.

  He continued tramping forward and on into the lobby of the Grand View Hotel. A pretty but weary-looking blond woman in her early thirties was manning the front desk, doing bookwork. She glanced up as Prophet strode to the desk and her cheeks colored a little.

  She looked Prophet up and down, critically.

  “Can . . . I . . . help you?”

  “I’d like a room.”

  She gazed at him, nodded once, an odd, amused light entering her brown-eyed gaze. “You’re the one who has all the men of Box Elder Ford looking as though the bogeyman were after them—my husband included.”

  “Oh, he is,” Prophet said, smiling grimly. “Indeed, he is. But that’s just between them and me, Mrs. Hunter. I see no reason why you and me can’t be friendly.”

  “Well, then.” The woman chuckled and turned the register book toward Prophet. “How long will you be staying?”

  “As long as it takes, Mrs. Hunter,” Prophet said, scribbling his name. “As long as it takes.”

  He pinched his hat brim to her, hefted his saddlebags on his shoulder, scooped his Winchester off the desk, and climbed the stairs.

  In his room, he dropped his gear on the bed and glanced out the west-facing window, trying to cast a look up the hill to the north, the direction in which Whitfield had headed.

  Why was it that everything in Box Elder Ford seemed to begin and end on the north end of town?

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Doctor Whitfield swung down from his saddle and made his way to Miss McQueen’s front porch. She didn’t have the red lamp burning in the front window yet, which was the signal to the men in the town that she was open for business, but she likely would soon. It wasn’t like Verna to take a night off. She liked money too much for that.

  She also liked the power she wielded in her supple body.

  The burning red light meant she was ready and waiting. The burning blue lamp meant she was with a customer. Why the women of the town hadn’t caught on to that, Whitfield had no idea. Or perhaps they had, but they merely ignored this neat, mini-Victorian house up here on the north end of town. Maybe they saw Verna as performing a handy function for them, as well.

  He’d often wished Diana had seen it that way . . .

  The doctor shambled up onto the porch, neatly painted powder blue with white trim and furnished with two wicker chairs with a small, wicker table set between them. The table had a white satin cloth draped over it. It was outfitted with a decanter of fine Spanish brandy and two overturned glasses. The setup was for waiting customers. They could sit out here and sip Verna’s complimentary brandy while they waited for her current client to leave.

  Whitfield had never seen anyone taking advantage of the chairs or the brandy. Most of Verna’s clients were far too discreet to risk being seen up here on her porch, even in the dark of night. She did not cater to saddle tramps, drummers, or range riders. By keeping her prices high, she’d successfully culled her clientele so that only the wealthiest and best behaved rode up the hill from town.

  Whitfield rapped on Verna’s front door. When he’d rapped two more times and received no response, he tried the door. It was open, as Verna felt secure enough here in Box Elder Ford to often forget to lock.

  Whitfield stepped into the lavishly and tastefully appointed parlor with its delicate cherry wood tables and shelves and several plush velvet chairs and fainting couches arranged around a small, brick fireplace in which n
o fire danced this summer night. Verna’s canary, Birdy, cheeped in his large, gilt-washed cage that hung down over her baby grand piano, which Verna played beautifully.

  Verna must have heard Whitfield enter, for she called down from somewhere upstairs, “I’m not taking customers this evening, I’m sorry. Please come back tomorrow night—will you, hon?”

  Whitfield liked her smooth, subtle, gently lilting southern accent, but he kept his mind on the business at hand.

  “It’s Clay,” he called up the stairs at the far end of the parlor. The steps were carpeted in the same burgundy as the fainting couches. The mahogany newel post was carved in the shape of a naked angel in flight.

  “Clay?” There were the faint tinkling sounds of water. She was bathing. “My goodness—to what do I owe the pleasure?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “I’ll be right down.”

  Whitfield had no intention of waiting. With one hand on the banister, he climbed the stairs to the second story, which was one large bedroom and dressing room broken up with ornate room dividers and decorated with candles and Chinese lanterns. The spicy aroma of opium hung in the air. No lanterns or candles had yet been lit, and the room was made even more sensuous by the sharp-edged shadows and prisms of early evening sunlight through which gold dust motes sifted.

  “I said I’d be down,” Verna gently remonstrated the doctor.

  She was lounging back in her long, porcelain, zinc-lined bathtub that sat before another cold fireplace, to the right of Verna’s high, canopied bed. She was partly in honey-gold sunlight, partly in shadow. She had a long, finely turned leg up, the foot resting on the opposite knee. She was slowly running a sponge along the calf, the water sounding like glass chimes in a light wind.

  Outside, birds chirped in the branches of a cottonwood near one of the room’s three, large windows.

  “Didn’t feel like waiting.”

  “My goodness!” Verna chuckled. “Been a long time, Clay. I guess you got tired of your priestly existence down there, eh?”

  Whitfield walked over to a teak table and poured himself a glass of brandy. “I’m not here for that, so take your time.”

  “Oh?” Verna lowered her leg into the water and rested her arms along the sides of the tub. A table stood by the tub, and a small silver and stone-crusted opium pipe rested in an ashtray. It was hard to tell through the sunlight-striped shadows, but her eyes appeared touched with a dreamy, glistening opium cast. “What are you here for, then, Clay?”

  Whitfield sat down in a lion-clawed, blue velvet chair far enough away from the tub that he couldn’t see the woman’s body in the shadows, which was good. He never wanted to see her body again.

  “Why no visitors tonight, Verna? It’s not like you, taking a night off.”

  “I took a ride in the country this afternoon.” She smiled dreamily past Whitfield, and her eyes were lit by a far window. “Plumb wore myself out, I guess.”

  Whitfield was vaguely curious, but he let it go.

  “I had a visitor this afternoon, as well. Prophet.”

  She turned to him, the dreamy smile still quirking her lips. “That makes two of us, then. He joined me in the country. Sweet man.”

  Whitfield studied her, puzzled, but then he chuckled sardonically and massaged the back of his neck. “Oh, I see.”

  “What do you see?”

  “Sleeping with the enemy?”

  “Oh, we didn’t sleep.” Verna laughed a little too loudly at that and slapped her right hand down against the edge of the tub. “I think I made him quite happy, in fact.”

  “I bet you did.”

  “He’s a big man, full of vinegar. But I think I can get my second wind for you, Clay.” She patted the side of the tub. “Would you like to join me?” She glanced at the opium pipe. “A little spice might loosen you up a little.”

  “No. That will never happen again.”

  “No, I suppose not,” Verna said with a fateful sigh. She looked at him with a half-beseeching, half-mocking smile. “Would you be a dear and pour me a brandy?”

  Whitfield contemplated that. Then, rising with a sigh, he set his own drink down and poured one for her. He took it over to the tub and gave it to her without looking at her. As he turned away, she wrapped her left hand around his wrist.

  “It wasn’t my fault,” she said quietly. “It wasn’t your fault, either. You must remember that. Terrible things happen.”

  He pulled his wrist free of her hand and sat down again in the chair. He sipped the brandy and turned to Verna, who was sitting back in the tub now, raising her own glass to her lips. “Prophet mentioned a name that I think you’ll recognize, Verna.”

  She arched an anticipatory brow.

  “Whitfield said, ‘Duvall.’ ”

  She stared at him, brow leveling.

  “You recognize that name—don’t you, Verna?”

  She blinked slowly, and in a low, even voice said, “Indeed.”

  “So that’s what all this is about. He . . . or they . . . killed your brother.”

  She blinked again slowly and spoke with a lightness that belied her eyes and her words. “Don’t say it like it’s such a small thing, Doctor. Whoever Dave was . . . whatever he became after he left home . . . he was my brother. We Duvalls stick together, avenge our own. That’s the way it’s always been.” Her voice had acquired a deep southern lilt, more pronounced than usual. “Ever since I read about his death in a newspaper, and the names of the two bounty hunters who killed him, I swore on my mother’s and father’s memory that I would seek restitution in blood.”

  Whitfield stared at her, aghast. “The Old South lives.”

  “Oh, it does.” Verna sipped her drink and swallowed.

  Whitfield said, “How in hell did you know Prophet and Miss Bonaventure were even going to be out at the old Ramsey Creek Outpost?”

  “I called them there.” Verna smiled in delight at her scheming. “Last week, a friend in Colorado Springs sent me a telegram informing me that she’d entertained Mr. Prophet in her brothel. Just a couple of weeks before, another dear friend and business associate informed me that she’d read in a newspaper ‘society’ column that the infamous Vengeance Queen herself, Miss Louisa Bonaventure, was spending a couple of months in Denver, enjoying the opera. I made it worth both my friends’ time to get messages to both bounty hunters”—she smiled, white teeth glistening in the fading, golden light from the window—“telling each that they could learn about the fate of the other by riding out to Ramsay Creek.”

  Whitfield’s expression was still one of disbelief. “My god, you’re cunning.”

  “Aren’t I, though?”

  “Since you had such a network of people keeping eyes out, why didn’t you just have them each killed where they’d been discovered? Surely you must have a gun-for-hire amongst your acquaintances.”

  “That would have been too easy. This way, leading them into an ambush, was more fun.”

  “But you sent amateurs.” Whitfield shook his head quickly, smiling with the realization. “But that was part of the fun, too, wasn’t it? Sending amateurs. Sending men from Box Elder Ford . . . your clients whom you knew you could control. Would have fun controlling, in fact. It was probably a little test—only not so little—to see how much power you had over them. To show them how much power you had over them. Threatening that if they didn’t feel up to the task you’d—what? Inform their wives?”

  Verna threw her head back, laughing. It was more like a witch’s cackle. “Don’t be silly, Clayton! I don’t give a damn about their wives. Most of them don’t, either.”

  Whitfield scowled, bewildered. “What was it, then?”

  She lowered her brows at him, as though she’d just realized she was speaking to an idiot. “Why, that I’d strike my tent and take my business elsewhere, of course.” She smiled again, slitting her long lids with their long, brown lashes and taking another sip from her glass. “There are some men in this town, Clayton, who can’t live without me.”

&n
bsp; Whitfield drained his brandy, setting the empty glass down on the floor by his right shoe. He leaned forward on his knees, entwining his hands together. “I frankly had no idea what kind of a monster you are, Verna.”

  “Monster?” She seemed surprised by the insult but not offended. “They killed my brother. An eye for an eye. It’s the southern way.”

  “I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about involving the townsmen. So brashly wielding your power under threat of closing those beautiful legs.”

  She gave a heavy-lidded smile, lifting one of the appendages in question, water dripping into the tub. “They are pretty, aren’t they?”

  “You know, I came here because I thought I could talk some sense into you. I thought maybe I could get you to let the townsmen off the hook, though that’s probably too late now, anyway.”

  “Oh, yes—I heard that Prophet gave them an ultimatum. Either they turn themselves in to our boy marshal and confess their sins, or he’ll be on the prowl like a hungry mountain lion. I bet they’re all trickling down their legs even as we speak.”

  She giggled devilishly.

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured,” Whitfield said. “This is all sport to you.” He rose and shuffled toward the stairs. Halfway there, he stopped and turned back to her as she lifted the pipe from the table. “You know, I always blamed myself for what happened to Diana. The storm, our fight over you, so that I was too distracted by the argument to take cover sooner. But now I realize that I’m not the only one to blame. Because you’re a devil, Verna. A devil in a very pretty package. But a devil, just the same.”

  “Oh, come now, Clayton.” She was lighting the pipe, blowing opium smoke and speaking between puffs. “Don’t you think you’re being just a tad overly dramatic?”

  “We’ll see, Verna. I think I know who to see about you.”

  He was almost to the stairs when the woman called to him casually, “I wouldn’t do that, Clayton. I wouldn’t go to Prophet.” She set the pipe on the table, tipped her head back, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “I know how much the boy means to you, Clayton.”

  She turned to him, and she was indeed a devil—a fiend with red-glowing eyes in the sunset light streaming through the window. “If you go to Prophet, Titus is likely to end up at the bottom of your cold well.”